I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon
the coals in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with
the fire-poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a
brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a
growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of
commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of
preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said
that he had "something on his mind."

Presently he said:

"What is a 'machine'? The word has been variously defined.
Here is one definition from a popular dictionary: 'Any
instrument or organization by which power is applied and made
effective, or a desired effect produced.' Well, then, is not a
man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks—or thinks
he thinks."

"If you do not wish to answer my question," I said, rather
testily, "why not say so?—all that you say is mere evasion.
You know well enough that when I say 'machine' I do not mean a
man, but something that man has made and controls."

"When it does not control him," he said, rising abruptly
and looking out of a window, whence nothing was visible in the
blackness of a stormy night. A moment later he turned about and
with a smile said:

"I beg your pardon; I had no thought of evasion. I
considered the dictionary man's unconscious testimony suggestive
and worth something in the discussion. I can give your question
a direct answer easily enough: I do believe that a machine
thinks about the work that it is doing."

That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether
pleasing, for it tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon's
devotion to study and work in his machine-shop had not been
good from him. I knew, for one thing, that he suffered from
insomnia, and that is no light affliction. Had it affected his
mind? His reply to my question seemed to me then evidence that
it had; perhaps I should think differently about it now. I was
younger then, and among the blessings that are not denied to
youth is ignorance. Incited by that great stimulant to
controversy, I said:

"And what, pray, does it think with—in the absence of a
brain?"

The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took
his favorite form of counter-interrogation:

"With what does a plant think—in the absence of a
brain?"

"Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should
be pleased to know some of their conclusions; you may omit the
premises."

"Perhaps," he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish
irony, "you may be able to infer their convictions from their
acts. I will spare you the familiar examples of the sensitive
mimosa and those insectivorous flowers and those whose stamens
bend down and shake their pollen upon the entering bee in order
that he may fertilize their distant mates. But observe this.
In an open spot in my garden I planted a climbing vine. When it
was barely above the surface I set a stake into the soil a yard
away. The vine at once made for it, but as it was about to
reach it after several days I removed it a few feet. The vine
at once altered its course, making an acute angle, and again
made for the stake. This manoeuver was repeated several times,
but finally, as if discouraged, the vine abandoned the pursuit
and ignoring further attempts to divert it traveled to a small
tree, further away, which it climbed.

"Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly
in search of moisture. A well-known horticulturist relates that
one entered an old drain-pipe and followed it until it came to a
break, where a section of the pipe had been removed to make way
for a stone wall that had been built across its course. The
root left the drain and followed the wall until it found an
opening where a stone had fallen out. It crept through and
following the other side of the wall back to the drain, entered
the unexplored part and resumed its journey."

"And all this?"

"Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the
consciousness of plants. It proves they think."

"Even if it did—what then? We were speaking, not of
plants, but of machines. They may be composed partly of wood—
wood that has no longer vitality—or wholly of metal. Is
thought an attribute also of the mineral kingdom?"

"How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of
crystallization?"

"I do not explain them."

"Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to
deny, namely, intelligent cooperation among the constituent
elements of the crystals. When soldiers form lines, or hollow
squares, you call it reason. When wild geese in flight take the
form of a letter V you say instinct. When the homogenous atoms
of a mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange themselves into
shapes mathematically perfect, or particles of frozen moisture
into the symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have
nothing to say. You have not even invented a name to conceal
your heroic unreason."

Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness.
As he paused I heard in an adjoining room known to me as his
"machine-shop," which no one but himself was permitted to enter,
a singular thumping sound, as of some one pounding upon a table
with an open hand. Moxon heard it at the same moment and,
visibly agitated, rose and hurriedly passed into the room whence
it came. I thought it odd that any one else should be in there,
and my interest in my friend—with doubtless a touch of
unwarrantable curiosity—led me to listen intently, though, I
am happy to say, not at the keyhole. There were confused
sounds, as of a struggle or scuffle; the floor shook. I
distinctly heard hard breathing and a hoarse whisper which said
"Damn you!" Then all was silent, and presently Moxon reappeared
and said, with a rather sorry smile:

"Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly, I have a machine in
there that lost its temper and cut up rough."

Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was
traversed by four parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:

"How would it do to trim its nails?"

I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no
attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and
resumed the interrupted monologue as if nothing had occurred:

"Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them
to a man of your reading) who have taught that all matter is
sentient, that every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being.
I do. There is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is
all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential; all
sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible
to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in such
superior organisms as it may be brought into relationship with,
as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of
his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose
—more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting
machine and that of his work.

"Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer's definition of
'Life'? I read it thirty years ago. He may have altered it
afterward, for anything I know, but in all that time I have
been unable to think of a single word that could profitably be
changed or added or removed. It seems to me not only the best
definition, but the only possible one.

"'Life,' he says, 'is a definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in
correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.'"

"That defines the phenomenon," I said, "but gives no hint
of its cause."

"That," he replied, "is all that any definition can do. As
Mill points out, we know nothing of effect except as a
consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without the
other, which is dissimilar: the first in point of time we call
the cause, the second, the effect. One who had many times seen
a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs
otherwise, would think the rabbit the cause of the dog.

"But I fear," he added, laughing naturally enough, "that my
rabbit is leading me a long way from the track of my
legitimate quarry: I'm indulging in the pleasure of the chase
for its own sake. What I want you to observe is that in Herbert
Spenser's definition of 'life' the activity of a machine is
included—there is nothing in the definition that is not
applicable to it. According to this sharpest of observers and
deepest of thinkers, if a man during his period of activity is
alive, so is a machine when in operation. As an inventor and
constructor of machines I know that to be true."

Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the
fire. It was growing late and I thought it time to be going,
but somehow I did not like the notion of leaving him in that
isolated house, all alone except for the presence of some person
whose nature my conjectures could go no further than that it was
unfriendly, perhaps malign. Leaning toward him and looking
earnestly into his eyes while making a motion with my hand
through the door of his workshop, I said:

"Moxon, whom do you have in there?"

Somewhat to my surprise he laughed lightly and answered
without hesitation:

"Nobody; the incident that you have in mind was caused by
my folly in leaving a machine in action with nothing to act
upon, while I undertook the interminable task of enlightening
your understanding. Do you happen to know that Consciousness is
the creature of Rhythm?"

"O bother them both!" I replied, rising and laying hold of
my overcoat. "I'm going to wish you good night; and I'll add
the hope that the machine which you inadvertently left in action
will have her gloves on the next time you think it needful to
stop her."

Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot I left the
house.

Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky
beyond the crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along
precarious plank sidewalks and across miry, unpaved streets I
could see the faint glow of the city's lights, but behind me
nothing was visible but a single window of Moxon's house. It
glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and fateful meaning.
I knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend's "machine-
shop," and I had little doubt that he had resumed the studies
interrupted by his duties as my instructor in mechanical
consciousness and the fatherhood of Rhythm. Odd, and in some
degree humorous, as his convictions seemed to me at that time, I
could not wholly divest myself of the feeling that they had some
tragic relation to his life and character—perhaps to his
destiny—although I no longer entertained the notion that they
were the vagaries of a disordered mind. Whatever might be
thought of his views, his exposition of them was too logical for
that. Over and over, his last words came back to me:
"Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm." Bald and terse as
the statement was, I now found it infinitely alluring. At each
recurrence it broadened in meaning and deepened in suggestion.
Why, here (I thought) is something upon which to found a
philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm all
things are conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is
rhythmic. I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth
of his thought—the scope of this momentous generalization; or
had he arrived at his philosophic faith by the tortuous and
uncertain road of observation?

That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon's expounding
had failed to make me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great
light shone about me, like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus;
and out there in the storm and darkness and solitude I
experienced what Lewes calls "The endless variety and excitement
of philosophic thought." I exulted in a new sense of knowledge,
a new pride of reason. My feet seemed hardly to touch the
earth; it was as if I were uplifted and borne through the air by
invisible wings.

Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom
I now recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously
turned about, and almost before I was aware of having done so
found myself again at Moxon's door. I was drenched with rain,
but felt no discomfort. Unable in my excitement to find the
doorbell I instinctively tried the knob. It turned and,
entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so
recently left. All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I had
supposed, was in the adjoining room—the "machine shop."
Groping along the wall until I found the communicating door I
knocked loudly several times, but got no response, which I
attributed to the uproar outside, for the wind was blowing a
gale and dashing the rain against the thin walls in sheets.
The drumming upon the shingle roof spanning the unceiled room
was loud and incessant.

I had never been invited into the machine-shop—had,
indeed, been denied admittance, as had all others, with one
exception, a skilled metal worker, of whom no one knew anything
except that his name was Haley and his habit silence. But in my
spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike
forgotten and I opened the door. What I saw took all
philosophical speculation out of me in short order.

Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table
upon which a single candle made all the light that was in the
room. Opposite him, his back toward me, sat another person. On
the table between the two was a chessboard; the men were
playing. I knew little about chess, but as only a few pieces
were on the board it was obvious that the game was near its
close. Moxon was intensely interested—not so much, it seemed
to me, in the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed
so intent a look that, standing though I did directly in the
line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved. His face was
ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. Of his
antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient; I
should not have cared to see his face.

He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with
proportions suggesting those of a gorilla—tremendous breadth
of shoulders, thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had
a tangled growth of black hair and was topped by a crimson fez.
A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the waist, reached
the seat—apparently a box—upon which he sat; his legs and
feet were not seen. His left forearm appeared to rest in his
lap; he moved his pieces with his right hand, which seemed
disproportionately long.

I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the
doorway and in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the
face of his opponent he could have observed nothing now,
excepting that the door was open. Something forbade me either
to enter or retire, a feeling—I know not how it came—that
I was in the presence of imminent tragedy and might serve my
friend by remaining. With a scarcely conscious rebellion
against the indelicacy of the act I remained.

The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board
before making his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move
the piece most convenient to his hand, his motions in doing so
being quick, nervous and lacking in precision. The response of
his antagonist, while equally prompt in the inception, was made
with a slow, uniform, mechanical and, I thought, somewhat
theatrical movement of the arm, that was a sore trial to my
patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I
caught myself shuddering. But I was wet and cold.

Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger
slightly inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon
shifted his king. All at once the thought came to me that the
man was dumb. And then that he was a machine—an automaton
chessplayer! Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me
of having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I did not
understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his
talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely
a prelude to eventual exhibition of this device—only a trick
to intensify the effect of its mechanical action upon me in my
ignorance of its secret?

A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transports—my
"endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought!" I was
about to retire in disgust when something occurred to hold my
curiosity. I observed a shrug of the thing's great shoulders,
as if it were irritated: and so natural was this—so entirely
human—that in my new view of the matter it startled me. Nor
was that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply
with its clenched hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more
startled than I: he pushed his chair a little backward, as in
alarm.

Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high
above the board, pounced upon one of his pieces like a
sparrowhawk and with an exclamation "checkmate!" rose quickly to
his feet and stepped behind his chair. The automaton sat
motionless.

The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening
intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of
thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low
humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily
louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of
the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It
gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had
escaped the repressive and regulating action of some controlling
part—an effect such as might be expected if a pawl should be
jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I had
time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken
by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but
continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In
body and head it shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill,
and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure
was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and
with a movement almost too quick for the eye to follow shot
forward across table and chair, with both arms thrust forward to
their full length—the posture and lunge of a diver. Moxon
tried to throw himself backward out of reach, but he was too
late: I saw the horrible thing's hands close upon his throat,
his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned, the
candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was black
dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct,
and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made
by the strangled man's efforts to breathe. Guided by the
infernal hubbub, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had
hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed
with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart
and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Moxon
underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands,
his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide
open and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—
upon the painted face of the assassin an expression of tranquil
and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess!
This I observed, then all was blackness and silence.

Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital.
As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing
brain I recognized in my attendant Moxon's confidential workman,
Haley. Responding to a look he approached, smiling.

"Tell me about it," I managed to say, faintly—"all about
it."

"Certainly," he said; "you were carried unconscious from a
burning house—Moxon's. Nobody knows how you came to be
there. You may have to do a little explaining. The origin of
the fire is a bit mysterious, too. My own notion is that the
house was struck by lightning."

"And Moxon?"

"Buried yesterday—what was left of him."

Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on
occasion. When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he
was affable enough. After some moments of the keenest mental
suffering I ventured to ask another question:

"Who rescued me?"

"Well, if that interests you—I did."

"Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did
you rescue, also, that charming product of your skill, the
automaton chess-player that murdered its inventor?"

The man was silent a long time, looking away from me.
Presently he turned and gravely said:

"Do you know that?"

"I do," I replied; "I saw it done."

That was many years ago. If asked today I should answer
less confidently.